UnitedHealthcare and Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County hand out fresh produce earlier this year in Westminster. Second Harvest has stepped up the effort in recent years to capture and distribute more fresh food, making up for losses in commodities it used to get from the federal government and surplus nonperishables from food manufacturers. NATHAN WORDEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Fresh produce is ready to be handed out at a mobile pantry event earlier this year sponsored by UnitedHealthcare and Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County. NATHAN WORDEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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People wait in line for the mobile pantry in Westminster on a Friday morning in June as volunteers prepared to hand out free food. NATHAN WORDEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Carrots are among the fresh produce ready to be handed out at a mobile pantry in Westminster last March by United Healthcare and Second Harvest Food Bank of Orange County. NATHAN WORDEN, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Parents and students line up in June as they receive 22 pounds of food distributed by the Orange County Food Bank at Roosevelt Elementary after the school received a library makeover. ANA P. GUTIERREZ, FOR THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Fresh produce is seen as parents and students line up in June to receive 22 pounds of food distributed by the Orange County Food Bank at Roosevelt Elementary after the school received a library makeover, one of 16 campuses nationwide chosen by Target and the Heart of America Foundation. ANA P. GUTIERREZ, FOR THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

People attending a public forum Thursday on hunger have the option to bring in $25 worth of food instead of paying the equivalent attendance fee.

That underscores the sense of need underlying "Hunger in the Real Orange County," a gathering in Costa Mesa hosted by 2-1-1 Orange County, the local helpline for social service referrals.

Hunger – what it is, whom it affects – became a more complex and deeper problem as the economy tanked. Simply put, hunger in Orange County of 2012 looks different than it did in 2007.

"We have people who formerly made six figures, people living in mansions who did not have any food to eat," said TerryLynn Fisher, public information officer for the Orange County Social Services Agency. "People that had previously donated to these food banks were now standing in line to get handouts.

"It's been that dramatic."

FOOD INSECURITY

The impact of the Great Recession on the middle class – and upper middle class – is old news, but it's still ongoing in Orange County. And the bad economy only made things worse for low-income residents who were already scrambling to put food on the table, Fisher and others said. Some of the troubling signs they cite:

•Donations are down and demand is up at food banks, food pantries and other social service agencies, leading to waiting lists and smaller food allotments.

•The number of Orange County residents receiving help through the federally funded CalFresh program, California's electronic version of the old food stamps program, has nearly tripled since 2007.

•One-third of children and slightly more than half the adults in Orange County are overweight or obese, a growing crisis driven in part by an inability to afford or access nutritious food.

•Orange County ranked second of all 58 counties in the state for food insecurity among low-income adults, according to 2009 figures in the most recent California Health Interview Survey.

The term "food insecurity" is part of more nuanced language introduced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2006 to address what it defines as "ranges of severity" when considering someone's access to food, if they have enough food, and whether what they are eating is nutritious.

Gillian Poe is executive director of the Orange County Food Access Coalition and one of the speakers scheduled to make a presentation Thursday. She explains it this way: "I think the key distinction between hunger and food insecurity is that hunger really can seem to be a condition of not having enough food, whereas food insecurity also takes into account the accessibility of the types or variety of foods people need to live active, healthy lives."

Poe is working with Cal State Fullerton researcher Sara E. Johnson, a behavioral ecologist and professor of anthropology, to look deeper into the findings from the California Health Interview Survey. The study was conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research in conjunction with California Food Policy Advocates and ranked Orange County second to Contra Costa County in "food insecurity" among low-income adults.

Johnson is conducting food security surveys locally to help understand how families experience hunger. People are being asked questions about how often they've eaten certain food groups, such as an apple for a snack, or a piece of fish or chicken for dinner, or a candy bar for breakfast in the past week to understand what they are eating on a regular basis, Poe said.

The research also will look at what people buy at the grocery store and what is available in their neighborhoods.

Based on what she knows about hunger in Orange County, Poe says it looks more like obesity than it does like a homeless person starving, although that demographic is certainly part of the picture.

"If we have people who have to make choices about what they're eating, they're probably compromising their nutrition," Poe said. "That's why hunger in our county can look like obesity. They're getting food but not the type they want or need. They're compromising and getting energy-dense food that is less expensive."

MORE DEMAND

Even as the economy slowly improves, those who provide food to the needy aren't expecting as dramatic a change in the other direction as they've witnessed the past five years.

"Unemployment is dropping, but we don't anticipate that dropping dramatically," said Barbara Wartman, marketing and public relations manager for Second Harvest Food Bank. "Even though people are employed, they are underemployed. They're working part time for less pay. We just don't really anticipate the need diminishing. We see it growing."

In 2009, when the National Bureau of Economic Research officially declared the end of the Great Recession, Second Harvest was serving about 200,000 people a month. This year, the food bank has served about 240,000 people a month.

Second Harvest has managed to keep donations up by working to secure perishables from manufacturers and grocery stores and move that food quickly through its warehouse in Irvine to the more than 470 charities the food bank serves. Rescuing perishable food has helped Second Harvest make up the difference in the drop in donations from more traditional sources, Wartman said.

Federal budget cuts have led to less availability of shelf-stable commodities – peanut butter, canned fruit and vegetables – from the government. More efficient operations have meant a dramatic drop in the excess canned and packaged products from food manufacturers that ended up being donated to food banks, she said.

"We're kind of playing catch-up because the commodity food we used to get from the government is down 39.6 percent from last year," Wartman said. She added that total food donations have risen 7.5 percent since last year.

Food contributions are down a half-million pounds compared with last year at the Orange County Food Bank in Garden Grove. So the food bank has had to institute a moratorium on helping charities that request food assistance, resulting in a waiting list of 28 nonprofits, said Director Mark Lowry.

Lowry will speak about efforts being made in the private and public sectors to combat hunger in Orange County. He looks beyond the more visible faces of hunger.

There are the many in line for a bag or box of groceries at the charities served by Second Harvest or the 50 sites around the county – churches, shelters, community centers – where food from the Orange County Food Bank is distributed monthly. But Lowry said, "Nobody is counting all the people who get turned away."

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

One area where social service providers see more opportunity is CalFresh (whose federal designation is the Supplemental Nutrition Program, or SNAP). A family of four in Orange County, for example, whose gross monthly income does not exceed $2,498, would qualify for CalFresh aid.

Many county residents are eligible but don't apply, a reflection of a statewide lag that has California the lowest among all states with a 53 percent participation rate, said Conxita Girvent, CalFresh program manager at the county's Social Services Agency. Reasons for not signing up for CalFresh include not knowing about eligibility and pride.

Said Fisher of the Social Services Agency, "A lot of people who are eligible don't apply because they think, 'I can pull myself up by my bootstraps.'"

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